There needs to be a better balance of instance and non-instanced content in SWTOR. Having only instanced dungeons and operations promotes too many bad things in an MMO, I will elaborate:

 

1. Instanced only content creates what I call the "meeting" guild, this is the guild where everyone logs on at the pre-defined "meeting" time (raid time), does the always available raid (instanced) then logs off sometimes for days, abandoning the people who like to play everyday. This is not healthy for an online games' social experience. No real reason to be on the game other than the prescribed time.

 

2. Instanced only content from a flashpoint perspective creates a social atmosphere where people do not really have to be responsible with the way they act or treat one another because they can randomly populate a group through the queue system, with zero interaction or discussion to form a group.

 

I believe an MMO needs a balance of competitive targets in the open world that motivate people to group together whatever time of the day it is or when they happen to be on, these targets being inside competitive dungeons or just roaming the zones. Current SWTOR design has world bosses that have zero motivating factors to go kill, why not load them with more interesting loot tables? Make people want to kill them, make people have a reason to do something, that's why a lot of people play.

I think your reasoning is faulty on a lot of this.

 

Your main points seem to be:

 

1) Many raiding guilds are populated by people who only log into SWTOR at raid time, leaving the guild with a seemingly low population at all other times.

 

--This is not a problem that could be fixed by improving open world bosses. These kinds of raiders are primarily motivated by raid "progression" and by the chance to get better gear that isn't available from vendors. They don't pug during the week because they know what a train wreck most pugs are and they prefer to only interact with guild mates. If, for instance, Nightmare Pilgrim were updated to drop better loot most likely these guild raiders would still only want to do the content at set times with their experienced guild members.

 

2) Instanced content allegedly creates an atmosphere of no repercussions for rude, counterproductive behavior.

 

--I would argue that in instanced groups there are actually more repercussions for bad behavior because it's easier to tell who in the group is being the problem. Rude people in FPs get removed from the group by vote-kick, incompetent people in operations get removed by the leader or by consensus. Also, people who cause problems in long operations/FPs tend to wind up on ignore lists or become infamous enough with the server at large to be widely shunned.

 

--In contrast, during the Gree event many groups of 16+ people formed up to take down the world bosses. From my experience, in such a large group it's near impossible to tell who is causing problems, ninja looting, griefing, etc. because 1 name briefly seen among 20 is not going to be remembered. If you want to see a lack of "responsibility", check out some of the stories of people from the opposite faction griefing a world boss group until everyone gives up and disbands. Or even people from the same faction griefing the group by repeatedly pulling the boss and causing it to reset.

 

All in all, I think it would be cool for there to be more interesting lvl 55 world bosses with good loot, but I don't think it's going to be the wondrous panacea you claim.

Well I am not speculating, I've played basically every MMO since Ultima Online came out in 1996, and I have seen the difference between instance everything, some instance, and no instance. I played EQ when they invented instancing, It was a turning point in MMOs that some are just seeing the aggregate effect of. My suggestion is not an all or nothing, its a better balance of both.

 

Something for everyone on their time table is the "walmart" of gaming, that's everything instanced, the problem is developers listened to the people who want things easy and want everyone to get a trophy. There is much more pride and sense of achievement when something is less attainable and mysterious, rather than everyone has their private shot at it.

 

To reiterate, this is not a post where I wonder or I think maybe, it is a post of what I have seen over the last 18 years of MMO gaming.

There needs to be a better balance of instance and non-instanced content in SWTOR. Having only instanced dungeons and operations promotes too many bad things in an MMO, I will elaborate:

 

1. Instanced only content creates what I call the "meeting" guild, this is the guild where everyone logs on at the pre-defined "meeting" time (raid time), does the always available raid (instanced) then logs off sometimes for days, abandoning the people who like to play everyday. This is not healthy for an online games' social experience. No real reason to be on the game other than the prescribed time.

 

2. Instanced only content from a flashpoint perspective creates a social atmosphere where people do not really have to be responsible with the way they act or treat one another because they can randomly populate a group through the queue system, with zero interaction or discussion to form a group.

 

I believe an MMO needs a balance of competitive targets in the open world that motivate people to group together whatever time of the day it is or when they happen to be on, these targets being inside competitive dungeons or just roaming the zones. Current SWTOR design has world bosses that have zero motivating factors to go kill, why not load them with more interesting loot tables? Make people want to kill them, make people have a reason to do something, that's why a lot of people play.

 

You're literally suggesting for them to do something on the very last day of a week long event that is exactly what you are describing.

I don't think non instanced is the answer because look at all the trouble Dreadtooth and the two gree event bosses caused when they were first out with grieving. In a game like this you can't have any serious open world raiding content because there will always be someone there to spoil your run.

 

What might be the answer though is more single boss instances rather than full 5-7 boss raids where you have to do one after the other. It's so much easier to get a group to dedicate 20 minutes for a single boss rather than hours for a full raid. Another idea is non-linear raids, having say four bosses in the instance you can do in any order you wish but you got to complete the four before you unlock the final fifth one.

1- about flashpoints: there's groups forming manually on the fleet everytime i watch chat.

i'd like to q even if i'm on freaking quesh with 3 other people only in the morning or on the theorethika.

 

2- instanced ops: i do pugs, but it's always better to do guild runs, becuase they won't need on arkanian bracers and black market earpiece, they will interupt and don't just spam mindless basic attack on an immune boss or cc'ed mob.

a. pugs are bad for gearing becuase of the rampant ninja loot.

b. people failing at the most retarded mechanics ingame.

c. people failing at the most retarded specs ingame.

d. i 90% of the times have to switch to tank because sane tanks don't do pugs.

 

3- world bosses: true they drop useless stuff, but if you try to kill for example dreadtooth, you'll see some griefing almost everyday, flagged nubs, taunt-resetting, same as gree event, and this means a lot of people you feel are missing form your playtime will just do it with their guild...

 

and to bring up again point 3 and point 2 b,c i have a bonus story for you:

 

when i do dailies with 3 other guildies at sectionx, we always pull dreadtooth, and kill him in 4 ( at 1 stack) to farm masks and vials. once i tried to pug that with random people and we failed miserably. we are not nim farmers or world first cademimu SM, but we succeed as normality where a pug normally fails..

A lot of the responders are the kind of people who have driven the dumbing down of MMOs. There needs to be a safe place and guaranteed content for the Walmart players like you, that whine about competitive things, and there needs to be something more satisfying for the people who play the game like me, to be challenged and stimulated by interesting, mysterious, competitive content. Walmart players have become the majority, so we get games like we have today, original MMO design was so much better, it is a sad day.

You're literally suggesting for them to do something on the very last day of a week long event that is exactly what you are describing.

 

The Gree event is a good thing, but in the entire game its one of the only things they got right, and why do we have to wait 6-9 months at a time for this one week to come?

 

Whoever has a title with the word *creative* in it in the bioware hierarchy needs to be fired, we do not want to limp along playing just because it is Star Wars, we deserve better, the Star Wars franchise deserves better.

1- about flashpoints: there's groups forming manually on the fleet everytime i watch chat.

i'd like to q even if i'm on freaking quesh with 3 other people only in the morning or on the theorethika.

 

2- instanced ops: i do pugs, but it's always better to do guild runs, becuase they won't need on arkanian bracers and black market earpiece, they will interupt and don't just spam mindless basic attack on an immune boss or cc'ed mob.

a. pugs are bad for gearing becuase of the rampant ninja loot.

b. people failing at the most retarded mechanics ingame.

c. people failing at the most retarded specs ingame.

d. i 90% of the times have to switch to tank because sane tanks don't do pugs.

 

3- world bosses: true they drop useless stuff, but if you try to kill for example dreadtooth, you'll see some griefing almost everyday, flagged nubs, taunt-resetting, same as gree event, and this means a lot of people you feel are missing form your playtime will just do it with their guild...

 

and to bring up again point 3 and point 2 b,c i have a bonus story for you:

 

when i do dailies with 3 other guildies at sectionx, we always pull dreadtooth, and kill him in 4 ( at 1 stack) to farm masks and vials. once i tried to pug that with random people and we failed miserably. we are not nim farmers or world first cademimu SM, but we succeed as normality where a pug normally fails..

 

Sorry but you're generalizing PuG groups, they're not all bad just atm there seems to be an influx of overly bad players particularly on TRE. Once you weed out the the bads you generally get some good capable people, for example last night half asleep I joined a EC NiM pug on one of my alts and an hour later came out of it with the warstalker title and surprised how easy it is at 55 when you don't have complete morons in your group. That's something even guilds aren't immune to, you can still have not-bright individuals in your guild that will wipe you every time and hold everyone back and trust me... a lot of guilds do have them.

A lot of the responders are the kind of people who have driven the dumbing down of MMOs. There needs to be a safe place and guaranteed content for the Walmart players like you, that whine about competitive things, and there needs to be something more satisfying for the people who play the game like me, to be challenged and stimulated by interesting, mysterious, competitive content. Walmart players have become the majority, so we get games like we have today, original MMO design was so much better, it is a sad day.

 

It's very telling that you can't think of a meaningful response to the points we raise and then just devolve into ad hominem fallacies. "I disagree with you people, therefore you are all stupid" is the gist of everything you just said there.

 

Human nature is to choose the path that gives the most reward for the lowest risk. It's not stupid, it's just how humanity works. You can rage all you want about modern gamers being bad about this, but the truth is that "munchkins" (people who play to maximize success and minimize effort) have existed since the dawn of RPGs. Intelligent game design takes this fact of life into account, and that's why BioWare has smartly put bosses inside of instances to remove the risk of griefing that would discourage most players from participating in that content.

Current SWTOR design has world bosses that have zero motivating factors to go kill, why not load them with more interesting loot tables? Make people want to kill them, make people have a reason to do something, that's why a lot of people play.

But if they have something that makes them worth killing multiple times, they become camped and it'll be difficult to get a kill. I don't want to first spend half an hour gathering a group and then another two hours trying to find the boss to kill. If I could just summon the boss on demand, much like an instance, I'd be much more likely to go for them.

Well I am not speculating, I've played basically every MMO since Ultima Online came out in 1996, and I have seen the difference between instance everything, some instance, and no instance. I played EQ when they invented instancing, It was a turning point in MMOs that some are just seeing the aggregate effect of. My suggestion is not an all or nothing, its a better balance of both.

And I've played Anarchy Online, which had non-instanced endgame raids for a long time. This had two negative effects.

 

Firstly, a certain group of people took control of the raids, and if you did something they didn't like, you wouldn't raid. Period. Attempted revolutions weren't consistent enough to matter.

 

Secondly, the raids were huge. 50+ people were not uncommon. The group in control of the raids at least had set up a point system which more or less guaranteed that you'd eventually get your item, but it still required participating every day for maybe two or three months. Add some extra months if you were ambitions enough to want more than one item, or gear up your alts too. And the items were of such power that there simply weren't any alternatives.

 

Eventually AO switched to instanced content, including one of the more popular endgame raids. While this opened it up for raiding guilds, players without guilds or in small guilds weren't really any better off. While they could form PUGs for the raids, items were generally flatrolled, meaning that the chances of getting one were slim. The droprate on the best item wasn't 100% either, and usually players wouldn't bother running the raid again on the same character after getting it, meaning that you were practically always rolling against 20 or so other players.

 

SW:TOR has managed to avoid the worst pitfalls I experienced in AO. Instanced content means it's available on demand, and I don't have to fight other players just to get access to it. Almost all non-vanity loot has a 100% droprate (save for a couple of cases where a single boss drops one of two items), and the amount scales up with group size, giving a reasonable chance of winning even in PUGs.

A lot of the responders are the kind of people who have driven the dumbing down of MMOs. There needs to be a safe place and guaranteed content for the Walmart players like you, that whine about competitive things, and there needs to be something more satisfying for the people who play the game like me, to be challenged and stimulated by interesting, mysterious, competitive content. Walmart players have become the majority, so we get games like we have today, original MMO design was so much better, it is a sad day.

 

What the hell are Wallmart players?